The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER/link) is an Earth observing instrument on the satellite Terra launched in 1999. GEO Grid archived all the ASTER data (〜140 terabytes as of 2007) with the grid file system "Gfarm" that is based on a HDD system.

With its 60 kilometer swath and Terra's recurrent period of 16 days, ASTER images one arbitrary region a few times per year in average. ASTER and its search engine through OGC Web Mapping Services (WMS/link) and Catalog Service Web (CSW/link). Then, users can easily obtain time series data with 15 meter spatial-resolution for any region all over the world. Researchers study the temporal variation of the land surface caused by human activities, earthquakes, climate change and so on. General public would be also interested in monitoring how their living environment has changed since 1999. Furthermore, in three VOs administrated by AIST, we provide higher level products of ASTER, such as a Digital Elevation Model, thermal infrared images, surface reflectance/emmisivity after atmospheric corrections.

To see ASTER Data images, please visit the following sites.
ASTER Data images of Chubu Airport, Japan